Jeep tour: day one

Cost: 1,250B plus 50B for thick sleeping bag plus 211B for various entry fees. A lot of money to pay to feel sick!!!

An early ish start and we were loaded into our Jeep - the driver: Luis Alberto, the cook: Esperanza, us and a French couple. We went in sort of convoy with 2 other Jeeps...Dutch, Aussie and German couples and a guy from Denmark...all very lovely.

The first day was a lot of driving, approx 300km which takes a while when you're tackling uneven dirt roads and driving through rivers.

We started off climbing very narrow tracks with a sheer cliff face. Up and up we went to about 4,800m. The scenery was beautiful, snowcapped mountains, icy rivers and llamas everywhere.

In the afternoon we stopped at the old ruins of a mining town which had gotten very rich and then had a plague as punishment, or so they believe. Apparently there is still loads to be mined but no capital to invest in the infrastructure.

Anna and I both started to get headaches so we popped some coca leaves which seemed to do the trick - or was it the ibuprofen?!

A while after dark we arrived at our hostel - very basic, no showers, dorms but not bunk beds as I'd feared. We had a lovely dinner of soup, steak and mashed potato. Electricity went off at 10pm so we had an early night.Read more